Yesterday, put the much-vaunted park connectors to good use with a bike trip to Changi Point from Simei. It really is good fun; the park connectors definitely beat weaving in and out between pedestrians and street furniture, trying simultaneously not to hit anything on the sidewalk and not to ride off the pavement and onto the actual carriageway. In a smooth whirl, you can easily cover kilometre after kilometre with far less fuss and effort, giving you more time to appreciate other things, like the architecture getting more and more rustic around you, or the landscape becoming less cluttered and less hectic, or the way that the light shifts from sunset to twilight (though I still feel that no matter how hard you look, you will only realise the shift in hindsight).
This time round, had the privilege of good company. One of my returning people mentioned that she had not visited the new Changi Point before, which I thought was a shame, since it has been done up rather nicely ever since they built the new boardwalk there. I mean, I quite liked the old Changi Point, which consisted of only a worn wooden jetty, a diesel pump in a shed and dozens of bumboats clustered together on the shore. But if something had to replace it, then at least it was replaced by something nice. Anyway - we planned this trip to correct that oversight, and so, I found myself whirring down the park connector along Loyang Avenue with someone at my side.
We spent a lot of time remembering. Of course, you'd be hard pressed to find a Singaporean kid who hasn't at least visited the chalets in the area, if not spent a holiday week in one of those colonial bungalows with the whole extended family under one roof. But beyond the games on the real turf, the once-upon-a-time sandcastles on that sliver of a beach, and the smell of barbeques that is as much a signature of that area as the golden light of sunset falling through the abundant canopy of trees; beyond all this, Changi Point is also connected with those rolling bumboat trips to Pulau Ubin, many many dinners at the hawker centre, and above all, I think, a feeling of familiarity. Changi Point is where I grew up; where we grew up. And though it has certainly changed (it has definitely become cleaner!), you can still see the old structure of the place, trace the familiar lines along the streets and through the trees that form a tangible echo of memory.
Pushing the bikes along the coast, listening to the waves breaking along the seawall and looking at the colours turning from gold to red to indigo, it also strikes me how circumstances can recreate themselves, and remembered experiences can re-emerge in front of your eyes. Jeanette Winterson wrote that time as it is experienced by humans, being a river, is turbulent, and sometimes you find yourself in the grip of an eddy that brings you back to a place where you've been before. Of course, perception and interpretation are two different things, and déjà-vu is more about what connections your mind spontaneously makes between the past and the present experience, than it is about the past remanifesting itself in actual present circumstances. It's about what you think you see, rather than what is actually there to be seen.
Anyway, that stroll reminded me of another stroll along another body of water in another continent, and a story that I wrote about that. Since then, I have had quite a few chances to walk along bodies of water (which, statistically speaking, is hardly remarkable), and every time I do so, I guess somewhere at the back of my head I am comparing it to that original occasion so long ago and so far away. And I am glad to say that, though I rationally understand that history repeating itself is highly unlikely, there have been a few other occasions that have compelled me to feel like I did on that original occasion.
But enough of the waxing lyrical. It was simply good to go on a trip like this with someone else for a change, because it doesn't happen very often nowadays. It was fun to let our conversation wander as we wandered across the island, trying to make ourselves heard over the whirr of the wheels and the gears, and drawing curious glances from the people we sped past. And it was good to know that, amidst all the connections that we (inadvertently or consciously) made previously, there lay the potential for such mutual regard and enjoyment. It is good how things have a way of working themselves out.
We should do this again!
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